As is known in the art, certain applications require very accurate positional location information and may use systems such as the US global positioning systems (GPS) or other global navigation satellite system (GNSS). However, the use of the GNSS for high accuracy, high-integrity, safety-critical, high-availability missions can be challenging due to strenuous environments that contain fixed and moving blockages with GNSS receivers mounted on a moving and flexing platform. For example, carrier phase and attitude measurements on a moving platform may not be accurate from one-time period to the next as the structure holding the receivers flexes under physical stress, and the relative distances between the receivers change. Further, the environment may be constantly changing, creating dynamic blockages, which can cause distortions in a carrier phase signal, leading to inaccurate range measurements.
Carrier phase measurements in particular are known to be susceptible to a wide range of errors. These errors include atmospheric, radio frequency interference (RFI), multipath, survey and receiver tracking issues. On a moving platform additional errors may arise, such as, platform flexure and attitude translation errors. In addition, lever arm translation error is introduced when comparing or combining carrier phase measurements among different sensors on the moving platform. These sources of dynamic error may cause sudden jumps of positioning error that may not be acceptable in high-accuracy, high-integrity, safety-critical applications.